Tomorrow I am heading to Heathrow to catch a plane for San Jose. No, I’m not heading to the CCIE Lab at RTP ( I sure wish I was though ). I am heading to join up with a boggle of bloggers and to spend two days having vendors tell me about their products for the GestaltIT Tech Field Day.

Why ?

That’s exactly what I asked myself when first approached. Why would I travel so far to meet a bunch of geeks ? Answer: Writing takes a more time than you think and it can be a lonely hobby. I could use some company and some inspiration, a little more ‘ethereal’ than ‘mind’ if you like.

I am always looking for ideas on what to write about. Most of my ideas are drawn from from my working environment. My typical work day involves researching, reading, learning and writing about Network Designs and Infrastructure Strategy. I am a Network Architect for a medium to large sized network, and I am part of a team that constantly changes, add, subtracts and modifies the IT Infrastructure. Because of time constraints and my location, I rarely meet vendors or resellers, and am unable to attend briefings and other vendor events.

So, this whole thing is something new. So here what I’m expecting:

meet up with a bunch of people who have the same hobby as me – blogging
Spend two days touring around San Jose looking at technology – what’s not to love about that!
My first trip to the USA – I have travelled quite a bit, both for business and personally but never been to the USA. Something new.
A holiday – yeah, weird, I know. But still it would be good break from my normal life. They say “any change is as good as holiday”, I’ll be testing that out.

But the most important thing to me will be learning something new.

Full Disclosure: What’s to Know ?

First, there is no editorial control or obligation to be nice. I will be sticking to my Blogging Ethics that I have previously set out.

Second, I am not being paid to attend but my travel expenses are paid for. In fact, as a contract/freelance worker, I am out of pocket for the four working days I will spend travelling and attending.

Experience suggests that vendors will likely turn up with some amount of pens, t-shirts, and other knick knacks but you would typically get that at any vendor event. Lets face it, ten bucks of marketing toys isn’t really gonna sway your opinion.

Relevance and Twitter Flooding

You can follow this journey on Twitter http://twitter.com/etherealmind

Or follow the hashtag #TechFieldDay at http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23techfieldday
to see all the Twitter output from the event. Or you can instantly follow all the bloggers on Twitter that are attending the event with following link:

http://twitter.com/TechFieldDay/tfd1-attendees

Warning: It looks like I am the only Networking person going so you may not know about these bloggers.

Road Map

So here is the map agenda whatever for the event, and I have put a list of the companies who are sponsoring just after that. If anyone has any questions they would like me to ask then get in contact or email myetherealmind — at __ gmail-com.

Blogger Tech Day Road Trip.(Click for a full size image)

Looking Forward

I’m really looking forward to this event. I don’t get to meet many people or attend many events, and the opportunity to meet a bunch of really smart people is quite daunting. I expect to learn heaps and have my eyes opened to loads of news technology. Love that.

It’s gonna be a great break from working for a living!!